Paul Gibson

So it's twofold.

A lot of times this decision might be made from the Major League B side of the house.

We may have a guy that we know we feel strongly as a starter, but in whatever situation we might be in the major league, it might dictate that that's the Luinder Avila type route, right?

And then there are other cases where you have a guy with a fastball that performs pretty well, he's got a hard breaking ball, and he starts to profile better as a reliever.

And then that might happen at AA or higher, right?

And then the focus changes from the resiliency type of method where can he handle pitching in 50, 60 games out of the bullpen?

Can he pitch back to back?

Can he handle the emotional side of pitching at the back end of the game?

Those are all factors that come into it.

But generally, that decision comes from on the side of whether we think he profiles better.

It's going to come from

how good a fastball plays and how good the break ball is going to be to be able to pitch effectively out of the bullpen.

So it's multifaceted, really.

But generally, if we find out that a guy can't start or it doesn't look good for him to start, we would transition to the bullpen and then put our efforts in that direction.

It depends on the player.

And we've had that case with guys that didn't respond well in the bullpen.

You know, it's an ongoing conversation with a lot of different people from JJ all the way down.

on how we handle this.

And so I'm more on the side of let's develop as many starters as we can and let's see where that takes us.

And, you know, players have a way of creating value for themselves, whether it be here or in other places, to be able to acquire a reliever as we did with Schreiber in Boston.